A Colonial Beginning
![[ Mount Olive Church ]](hist_ra_olive.gif)
The Old Court Road was originally an old Indian trail, then used by rangers from Fort Garrison to keep Susquehannock and Shawnee Indian incursions in check. These two tribes of Indians were occasionally hostile to white settlers, prompting the construction of Fort Frederick in the 1750's to protect settlers along the Cumberland Road. Fort Garrison was built in 1695, and is still standing, though surrounded by a housing development. It is a small stone blockhouse, but easily defensible against arrows, spears and axes. The Old Court Road was later used as the road to the county court at Joppatown, the county seat of Baltimore County from 1712 to 1768 and the rival of Baltimore City. Because of the heavily wooded nature of the surrounding land, the area became known as Garrison Forest.
Fort Garrison was located off the dirt Conewago Road, which ran from Baltimore to Hanover, Pennsylvania. This was another Indian trail, which was cut into a wagon road in 1737. The Conewago trail eventually became the Reisterstown Road.
Rolling Road, the oldest road still in use in the Randallstown area, was used by area planters to roll their hogsheads of tobacco and dry goods to market, and to barges on the local waterways for shipping to Baltimore harbor, or to the C & O Canal.
Harrisonville was a town in Baltimore County 12 miles from Baltimore City on the Liberty Turnpike, and 15 miles from Towsontown. The town dates from about 1794.
Revolutionary War
Christopher Randall Jr. was one of the Colonial Justices of the Baltimore County Court in the year 1723. The family continued to be actively involved in local politics through the next half-century, all the way up to the Revolutionary period.
William Randall joined the Baltimore County Committee of Observation in 1775. The purpose of the committee was to maintain order and prevent social unrest in light of the blockade of British goods. The blockade caused a severe inflation of prices in the Baltimore area, and many businesses went into debt. In addition, a percentage of the sale price of all staple products went to the poor people of Boston, who were suffering under the Intolerable Acts. Merchants, professionals and other prominent citizens patrolled the streets of Baltimore and environs to prevent theft, robbery, looting and arson of property. But by August of 1775, prominent citizens, including Charles Ridgely, William Randall, Ezekiel Towson and Stephen Cromwell, quit the committee. It is not certain whether their political views were too conservative for the Baltimore rebels, or too radical for conservative Governor Eden.
By 1776 the entire population of Baltimore City and county was only 12,000.
The Federal Period
The area's largest structure of the time, the Odell gristmill, was built between 1790 and 1795. This three-story stone-and-wood structure was built on Powell's Run Road and Liberty Pike. Though tobacco was the chief Maryland crop of that era, local farmers grew mainly corn, wheat, buckwheat, rye and oats, which provided plenty of business for the mill.
The New Tavern was built by Robert Ward in 1802, which served traffic from the west. The tavern was 11 miles from Baltimore City Hall. The road was widened to accommodate traffic between Baltimore City and the Ohio country, and was first named Liberty Road at this time. Farmers from Carroll County used the road to bring their produce through the Randallstown tollgate to the city markets. It was reported that the condition of the road was so bad that it was an impassable muddy morass for half the year.
The Ward family were devout Methodists, and they held church services in the tavern from 1802 until 1845, when they moved to a new church on the Old Court Road.
In the years 1812-1814, all of the male residents, ages 16-45, were levied into the militia service, mandated by state law, in order to combat the British forces in the Chesapeake Bay, about to attack Baltimore. Monthly militia drill was mandatory. Some of these men served at Fort McHenry, and some on the field at the Battle of North Point.
There were eight members of the Randall family who took up arms during the Battle of Baltimore. Best known was Major Beal Randall Jr., of Nace's Regiment, in Stansbury's 11th Brigade. He led a rifle battalion to distinction during the Battle of North Point. His captain of Company C was brother John T. Randall.
John C. Randall was a private in Company B of the 36th Regiment, and Nicholas Randall was a private in Company D of the 41st Regiment. There was another William Randall in the Baltimore Volunteers at the same time.
Private Aquia Randall was killed during the battle, and his name appears on the War of 1812 monument on Calvert Street in Baltimore City.
Source: A Brief History of Randallstown, Baltimore County Public Library